"And have your cousins no theory? They apparently saw a good deal of him." "My cousin Philip says frankly he is absolutely beaten by the whole performance. Jean--well girls are rum things." "What are Miss Rendall's views then?" I enquired. "She is generally quick enough at guessing, and as fond of gossip as most of her sex, but for some reason she keeps very quiet about it. It's my belief she knows something. In fact I shouldn't be surprised if Whiteclett had told her a little and sworn her to secrecy. Men do tell women things sometimes, as I daresay you have noticed for yourself, Mr. Hobhouse." "What a very strange story!" murmured Mr. Hobhouse. So this was the tale of my escapade as it was told in Ransay. The doctor's manner of telling it was the best guarantee of his own good faith I could wish, and I was ready now to dismiss the blind incident as a misleading trifle. But O'Brien seemed to have gone out of his way to throw doubt on every point raised,--and curiously enough to have always offered a wrong solution. It might be sheer contrariness, but it stuck me as odd. As to Miss Jean's silence, what did that mean? I resolved to keep my eyes very wide open indeed. V WAITING By a fortunate chance Dr. Rendall was no expert in antiquarian matters, and yet had sufficient respect for those who were to give them every encouragement and make all allowances for any irregularity in their hours caused thereby. Mr. Hobhouse possessed several very learned looking volumes, such as "The Early Christian Monuments of Scotland," "The Windy Isles in Early Celtic Times," "Ecclesiological Notes on Some of the Islands of Scotland," and other tomes of that nature, and from these he could quote whole paragraphs without so much as pausing for breath (in fact he dared not pause, lest he forget). Mr. Hobhouse moreover talked in his garrulous way of adding his own modest contribution to this literature in the shape of a monograph on the antiquities of Ransay. With this end in view it was therefore very natural that he should spend much of his time rambling over the island, particularly along the coasts, where he declared the early monuments he was especially interested in were mostly to be found, and should even at times be detained by his enthusiasm till darkness had fallen. It was also very natural that he should wish to consult all the most ancient inhabitants, and should in consequence seek out and interview every native over sixty years of age. In short this hobby not only gave this enthusiastic gentleman a sound pretext for being in the most out of the way places at the most unlikely hours, but also for inspecting narrowly with his own eyes each white bearded patriarch who might, or might not, have worn six months ago a pair of tinted spectacles; which--to descend slightly in the literary scale--accounts for the milk in the cocoanut.